F*ck yeah, Fluoro!: A 2007 Flashback

Ah fashion you fickle beast, how you’ve led me to do some terrible things over the years. Under the intoxicating opiate of group think, I’ve cut my hair into one of those choppy mullet ‘dos, trawled Canberra’s malls in a denim mini-skirt paired with oversized skate shoes and handed Supré 40 hard-earned, minimum-wage dollars for a pink, sparkly, elastic spaghetti-strapped dress to wear to the school social. But while all these undeniably-horrible aesthetic decisions are, indeed, horrible, there’s one fashion event from my past that truly sets itself apart in the shame stakes: fluoro.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. In 2007, fluoro came out of nowhere (well, the 80s) and swept Australia into a neon-drenched stupor which would quickly claim the dignity of too many young Australians. Sadly, I was one of the casualties. The stand-out moment of my relationship with the fad was a fluoro-themed eighteenth I attended, without a hint of irony, smack bang in the middle of that glorious year.

The photos from that party, aside from being a source of endless-amusement for my desk-buddy JackT, are a perfectly preserved time-capsule: offensively-bright pink, yellow, orange and green attire was paired with glowsticks (around the neck, wrists and looped through giant hoop earrings) and just as unnaturally coloured Vodka Cruisers. 2007 was also the year I came of age, which goes part of the way to explaining the craze. Fluoro, for the newly-18, went hand-in-hand with all things new and exciting: Festivals! Clubbing! Brightly coloured vomit!

But fluoro attire wasn’t only donned by the fresh of face. It was everywhere. In ’07, ITM’s timmac took a look at the fad at the peak of its existence.

“Fashion, my friends, goes in cycles, and the pack ‘mentality’ can sometimes be hard to resist,” he observed. “Like the homeboy of yesteryear and the emo of yesterday, Australia is today caught up in a whole new fashion trend, and it’s hard to miss. Yes, it’s fluoro.”

And the event that encapsulated it all? Parklife 2007. “On the national Parklife festival tour recently, this trend seemingly hit its peak when it seemed as though every second punter had at least one fluoro fashion item or accessory added to their attire.”